On Anna Maria, tall houses on hold

Published: Friday, February 1, 2013 at 10:12 p.m.

Last Modified: Friday, February 1, 2013 at 10:12 p.m.

ANNA MARIA - Just as high-season visitors began settling in here for their winter dose of island tranquility — a bungalow, grouper dinners, leisurely walks on the pier — this waterfront community has been embroiled in a battle about who can rent what for how long.

Spurred by outraged homeowners in this northernmost of the three communities on Anna Maria Island, city commissioners voted to curtail rentals shorter than 30 days, only to reverse that get-tough stance less than a week later when confronted by the other side of the debate: rental owners and developers.

Commissioners worried about lawsuits threatened by property owners who already have booked rentals and collected deposits that will carry them through the year.

Then, on Thursday night, government leaders presiding over this one-square-mile piece of paradise and its 1,500 residents took a new stance: They passed a moratorium on any construction of a residence more than 27 feet tall.

“It is megahouses being used as short-term rentals which are causing all the problems,” said City Commissioner Chuck Webb, who is leading the charge. “They are destroying the quality of life for residents, and our comprehensive plan clearly states that this is a residential community.”

Within a month or two, Webb expects commissioners will have a permanent replacement for an ordinance that now allows the three-story structures that have come to dominate the city's construction scene.

Though the public focus has been on efforts to force landlords to curtail short-term leasing, the other issue has loomed just as large, Since the real estate downturn, there has been a proliferation of bigger and bigger rental homes, homes that nearby residents say are far too much for their previously quaint neighborhoods.

The struggle speaks to the tension between the laid-back atmosphere that has drawn thousands of retirees to Southwest Florida and the growing national reputation enjoyed by the region's resort communities as a place where the winter-weary can temporarily swap snow boots for sandals.

Though the fight in Anna Maria is now at its hottest, the struggle over rentals has been a recurring theme since at least 2005, when owners began capitalizing on the prices their properties could command.

After three years of litigation costing more than $1 million, the city of Venice was forced to pay $300,000 to a property owner for selectively targeting his rentals with time limits.

In the summer of 2011, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law House Bill 883, which effectively codified the suit that Venice lost, barring municipalities from changing rules to keep landlords from making short-term rentals unless the rules were grandfathered in.

‘Out of the tube'?

A typical attendee who cheered the Anna Maria City Commission on Jan. 24 was Jill Morris, who owns a home a block from Pine Avenue.

From her bedroom window, she can see one of the big-box homes on North Shore Drive, and says it looks silly alongside the charmingly restored bungalow next door.

“I don't have a problem with weekly rentals,” Morris said. “I think we are losing what I define as the character of Anna Maria. Small bungalows are being replaced with homes that, in my opinion, are completely out of scale and inappropriate for the lot sizes we have.”

But the owner of some of these new multibed houses says “the toothpaste is already out of the tube” in the rental debate.

“The city of Anna Maria is barking up the wrong tree,” said Joe Varner. His AnnaMariaVacations.com rents out more mega-homes than anybody else on the island. “This has already been litigated in the city of Venice, which is why they rescinded it four days later.”

Driving the dispute is the larger pile of money that can be made by maximizing the number of bedrooms that can be fit onto a lot close to the water. A weekly rental produces a higher yield than a monthly one, and the highest nightly rates are for even shorter stays of three to four days.

While a 3-2 property on a side street might draw $50,000 per year in gross rents, Varner says he has one six-bedroom house in his rental stable that brings in $150,000. A weekly rent of $5,000 to $7,000 is not unusual for a multibedroom home with its own pool.

The fight in Anna Maria was preceded by a similar dustup in Holmes Beach, which occupies the middle of the barrier island.

Anti-big-box activists took over the Holmes Beach City Commission in November, led by retired attorney Jean Peelen, who started the movement against the larger rental homes when she was first elected a year before.

Several key city officials retired; the new commission has installed its own team, and has begun tightening up the community's building code and its enforcement of rental rules.

House Bill 883, now Florida law, precludes Holmes Beach or any other Florida cities from trying to adjust the length of rentals.

“We were lucky we had what we had in place. We cannot change a word in it or we lose it all,” Peelen said.

That is why her focus has been blocking construction of future megahomes.

As Peelen and her new guard took over Holmes Beach, observers say, the builders of party houses began focusing more effort in Anna Maria, where officials had grown a bit more relaxed.

“They can do nightly rentals right now in Anna Maria,” Peelen said. “They have no regulations, and with 883 they can't make any.”

The August manifesto

It was some of the rental homes built by developer Shawn Kaleta in Holmes Beach that galvanized that city into new activism.

The best example, Peelen says, is the set of two homes Kaleta finished last year at 307 66th St.

There, the developer took a lot zoned for a duplex and built two tall, skinny rental houses separated by just a few feet. The way he got the permit to build two homes on one lot was to create a single concrete foundation that connects them underground, something allowed under the existing building code.

The two houses are now managed separately, each as a six-bedroom rental and each with its own pool and driveway.

One is now for sale at $995,000, listed by a real estate group in which Kaleta is a managing director. The listing boasts that the property will create $120,000 per year in gross revenue.

Kaleta spoke briefly with a reporter, but declined to be interviewed, suggesting that the developer side of this story could best be gotten from Varner, his business partner and rental manager.

Kaleta was part of the focus of a manifesto entitled “Crisis in Holmes Beach” that Peelen issued in August. In it, she said the developer already had built at least 64 homes in the Holmes Beach rental district.

Most of them “were sold to people who never intended to live in Holmes Beach but only to make money here,” Peelen wrote.

“Typical are duplexes with six bedrooms per house that are advertised to hold 16 people each,” she wrote. “This means a weekly invasion of 32 new people into a residential neighborhood.”

Now Peelen's new “Land Area Ratio Rules” applies not just to rentals but to any house. Boiling it down to a simple example: A developer cannot build more than a 3,400-square-foot house on a 10,000-square-foot lot.

“That applies to all houses,” she said. “Duplexes, singles, everything. We were getting the big eight-bedroom single-family homes as well.

“They were not as much of a horror as the duplexes, but still very intrusive.”

Webb, the Anna Maria commissioner, acknowledges that Holmes Beach is ahead of his city in addressing the issue.

“We didn't really start having this problem until about a year and a half ago, about the same time the state law got passed,” Webb said. “I have read it 100 times and I still don't know what it says.

<p><em>ANNA MARIA</em> - Just as high-season visitors began settling in here for their winter dose of island tranquility — a bungalow, grouper dinners, leisurely walks on the pier — this waterfront community has been embroiled in a battle about who can rent what for how long.</p><p>Spurred by outraged homeowners in this northernmost of the three communities on Anna Maria Island, city commissioners voted to curtail rentals shorter than 30 days, only to reverse that get-tough stance less than a week later when confronted by the other side of the debate: rental owners and developers.</p><p>Commissioners worried about lawsuits threatened by property owners who already have booked rentals and collected deposits that will carry them through the year.</p><p>Then, on Thursday night, government leaders presiding over this one-square-mile piece of paradise and its 1,500 residents took a new stance: They passed a moratorium on any construction of a residence more than 27 feet tall.</p><p>“It is megahouses being used as short-term rentals which are causing all the problems,” said City Commissioner Chuck Webb, who is leading the charge. “They are destroying the quality of life for residents, and our comprehensive plan clearly states that this is a residential community.”</p><p>Within a month or two, Webb expects commissioners will have a permanent replacement for an ordinance that now allows the three-story structures that have come to dominate the city's construction scene.</p><p>Though the public focus has been on efforts to force landlords to curtail short-term leasing, the other issue has loomed just as large, Since the real estate downturn, there has been a proliferation of bigger and bigger rental homes, homes that nearby residents say are far too much for their previously quaint neighborhoods.</p><p>The struggle speaks to the tension between the laid-back atmosphere that has drawn thousands of retirees to Southwest Florida and the growing national reputation enjoyed by the region's resort communities as a place where the winter-weary can temporarily swap snow boots for sandals. </p><p>Though the fight in Anna Maria is now at its hottest, the struggle over rentals has been a recurring theme since at least 2005, when owners began capitalizing on the prices their properties could command.</p><p>After three years of litigation costing more than $1 million, the city of Venice was forced to pay $300,000 to a property owner for selectively targeting his rentals with time limits.</p><p>In the summer of 2011, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law House Bill 883, which effectively codified the suit that Venice lost, barring municipalities from changing rules to keep landlords from making short-term rentals unless the rules were grandfathered in.</p><p><b>'Out of the tube'?</b></p><p>A typical attendee who cheered the Anna Maria City Commission on Jan. 24 was Jill Morris, who owns a home a block from Pine Avenue.</p><p>From her bedroom window, she can see one of the big-box homes on North Shore Drive, and says it looks silly alongside the charmingly restored bungalow next door.</p><p>“I don't have a problem with weekly rentals,” Morris said. “I think we are losing what I define as the character of Anna Maria. Small bungalows are being replaced with homes that, in my opinion, are completely out of scale and inappropriate for the lot sizes we have.”</p><p>But the owner of some of these new multibed houses says “the toothpaste is already out of the tube” in the rental debate.</p><p>“The city of Anna Maria is barking up the wrong tree,” said Joe Varner. His AnnaMariaVacations.com rents out more mega-homes than anybody else on the island. “This has already been litigated in the city of Venice, which is why they rescinded it four days later.”</p><p>Driving the dispute is the larger pile of money that can be made by maximizing the number of bedrooms that can be fit onto a lot close to the water. A weekly rental produces a higher yield than a monthly one, and the highest nightly rates are for even shorter stays of three to four days.</p><p>While a 3-2 property on a side street might draw $50,000 per year in gross rents, Varner says he has one six-bedroom house in his rental stable that brings in $150,000. A weekly rent of $5,000 to $7,000 is not unusual for a multibedroom home with its own pool.</p><p>The fight in Anna Maria was preceded by a similar dustup in Holmes Beach, which occupies the middle of the barrier island.</p><p>Anti-big-box activists took over the Holmes Beach City Commission in November, led by retired attorney Jean Peelen, who started the movement against the larger rental homes when she was first elected a year before.</p><p>Several key city officials retired; the new commission has installed its own team, and has begun tightening up the community's building code and its enforcement of rental rules.</p><p>House Bill 883, now Florida law, precludes Holmes Beach or any other Florida cities from trying to adjust the length of rentals.</p><p>“We were lucky we had what we had in place. We cannot change a word in it or we lose it all,” Peelen said.</p><p>That is why her focus has been blocking construction of future megahomes.</p><p>As Peelen and her new guard took over Holmes Beach, observers say, the builders of party houses began focusing more effort in Anna Maria, where officials had grown a bit more relaxed.</p><p>“They can do nightly rentals right now in Anna Maria,” Peelen said. “They have no regulations, and with 883 they can't make any.”</p><p><B>The August manifesto</b></p><p>It was some of the rental homes built by developer Shawn Kaleta in Holmes Beach that galvanized that city into new activism.</p><p>The best example, Peelen says, is the set of two homes Kaleta finished last year at 307 66th St.</p><p>There, the developer took a lot zoned for a duplex and built two tall, skinny rental houses separated by just a few feet. The way he got the permit to build two homes on one lot was to create a single concrete foundation that connects them underground, something allowed under the existing building code.</p><p>The two houses are now managed separately, each as a six-bedroom rental and each with its own pool and driveway.</p><p>One is now for sale at $995,000, listed by a real estate group in which Kaleta is a managing director. The listing boasts that the property will create $120,000 per year in gross revenue.</p><p>Kaleta spoke briefly with a reporter, but declined to be interviewed, suggesting that the developer side of this story could best be gotten from Varner, his business partner and rental manager.</p><p>Kaleta was part of the focus of a manifesto entitled “Crisis in Holmes Beach” that Peelen issued in August. In it, she said the developer already had built at least 64 homes in the Holmes Beach rental district.</p><p>Most of them “were sold to people who never intended to live in Holmes Beach but only to make money here,” Peelen wrote.</p><p>“Typical are duplexes with six bedrooms per house that are advertised to hold 16 people each,” she wrote. “This means a weekly invasion of 32 new people into a residential neighborhood.”</p><p>Now Peelen's new “Land Area Ratio Rules” applies not just to rentals but to any house. Boiling it down to a simple example: A developer cannot build more than a 3,400-square-foot house on a 10,000-square-foot lot.</p><p>“That applies to all houses,” she said. “Duplexes, singles, everything. We were getting the big eight-bedroom single-family homes as well.</p><p>“They were not as much of a horror as the duplexes, but still very intrusive.”</p><p>Webb, the Anna Maria commissioner, acknowledges that Holmes Beach is ahead of his city in addressing the issue.</p><p>“We didn't really start having this problem until about a year and a half ago, about the same time the state law got passed,” Webb said. “I have read it 100 times and I still don't know what it says.</p><p>“I don't know what our boundaries are, as far as what we can do.”</p>